CHAPTER XLI
LADY HAMILTON
The daisies we string in chains before ten, we tread under foot without compunction after twenty. Cerise, pacing a noble terrace rolled and levelled beneath the windows of her husband’s home, gave no thought to the humble petals bending to her light footfall, and rising again when it passed on; gave no thought to the flaring hollyhocks, the crimson roses, all the bright array of autumn’s gaudier flowers flaunting about her in the imposing splendour of maturity; gave no thought even to the fair expanse of moor and meadow, dale and dingle, copse and corn-field, wood, wold, and water, on which her eyes were bent.
She might have travelled many a mile, too, even through beautiful England, without beholding such a scene. Overhead, the sky, clear and pure in the late summer, or the early autumn, seemed but of a deeper blue, because flecked here and there with wind-swept streaks of misty white. Around her glowed, in Nature’s gaudiest patch-work, all the garden beauty that had survived July. On a lower level by a few inches lay a smooth, trim bowling-green, dotted with its unfinished game; and downward still, foot by foot, like a wide green staircase, row after row of terraces were banked, and squared, and spread between their close-cut black yew hedges, till they descended to the ivy-grown wall that divided pleasure-ground from park. Here, slopes of tufted grass, swelling into bolder outlines as they receded, rolled, like the volume of a freshening sea, into knolls, and dips, and ridges, feathered in waving fern—dotted with goodly oaks—traversed by deep, narrow glades, in which the deer were feeding—shy, wild, and undisturbed. Beyond this, again, the variegated plain, rich in orchards, hedgerows, and enclosures studded with shocks of corn, seamed too by the silver of more than one glistening stream, was girdled by a belt of purple moorland; while, in the far distance, the horizon was shut in by a long low range of hills, lost in a grey-blue vapour, where they melted into sky.
Behind her stood the grim and weatherworn mansion, with its thick stone walls, dented, battered, and defaced, as if it had defied a thousand tempests and more than one siege, which, indeed, was the fact. Every old woman in the country-side could tell how the square grey keep, at the end of the south wing, had resisted the Douglas, and there was no mistaking Cromwell’s handwriting on more than one rent in the comparatively modern portions of the building. Hamilton Hill, though it had never been called a fort, a castle, or even a hall, was known far and wide for a stronghold, that, well supplied and garrisoned, might keep fifty miles of the surrounding district in check; and the husband of Cerise was now lord of Hamilton Hill.
No longer the soldier adventurer, the leader of Grey Musketeers, compound of courtier and bravo—no longer the doubtful skipper of a suspicious craft, half-trader, half-pirate—Sir George Hamilton, with position, property, tenants, and influence, found himself a very different person from the Captain George who used to relieve guard at the Palais Royal, and lay ‘The Bashful Maid’ broadside on to a Spanish galleon deep in the water, with her colours down and her foresail aback, a rich prize and an easy prey. Ere the brigantine had dropped her anchor in the first English port she made, George received intelligence of his far-off kinsman’s death, and his own succession to a noble inheritance. It came at an opportune moment, and he was disposed to make the most of it. Therefore it was that Cerise (now Lady Hamilton) looked from the lofty terrace over many a mile of fair English scenery, much of which belonged, like herself, to the man she loved.
They were fairly settled now, and had taken their established place—no lowly station—amongst their neighbours. Precedence had not, indeed, been yielded them without a struggle; for in the last as in the present century, detraction claimed a fair fling at all new-comers, and not what they were, but who they were, was the important question amongst a provincial aristocracy, who made up by minute inquiry for the limited sphere of their research. At first people whispered that the husband was an adventurer and the wife an actress. Well, if not an actress, at least a dancing-girl, whom he had picked up in Spain, in Paris, in the West Indies, at Tangiers, Tripoli, or Japan! Lady Hamilton’s beauty, her refined manners, her exquisite dresses, warranted the meanest opinion of her in the minds of her own sex; and although, when they could no longer conceal from themselves that she was a Montmirail of the real Montmirails, they were obliged to own she had at least the advantage of a high birth, I doubt if they loved her any better than before. They pitied Sir George, they said, one and all—“He, if you like, was charming. He had been page to the great King; he had been adored by the ladies of the French Court; he had killed a Prince of the Blood in a duel; he had sacked a convent of Spanish nuns, and wore the rosary of the Lady Abbess under his waistcoat; he had been dreadfully wicked, but he was so polite! he had the bel air; he had the tourneur Louis Quatorze; he had the manners of the princes, and the electors, and the archdukes now passing away. Such men would be impossible soon; and to think he could have been entrapped by that tawdry Frenchified Miss, with her airs and graces, her fans and furbelows, and yards of the best Mechlin lace on the dress she went gardening in! It was nothing to them, of course, that the man should have committed such an absurdity; but, in common humanity, they could not help being sorry for it, and, unless they were very much deceived, so was he!”
With the squires, again, and county grandees of the male sex, including two or three baronets, a knight of the shire, and the lord-lieutenant himself, it was quite different. These honest gentlemen, whether fresh or fasting in the morning, or bemused with claret towards the afternoon, prostrated themselves before Cerise, and did homage to her charms. Her blue eyes, her rosy lips, the way her gloves fitted, the slender proportions of her feet, the influence of her soft, sweet manner, resulting from a kindly, innocent heart—above all, the foreign accent, which added yet another grace, childish, mirth-inspiring, and bewitching, to everything she said—caused men of all ages and opinions to place their necks voluntarily beneath the yoke. They swore by her; they toasted her; they broke glasses innumerable in her honour; they vowed, with repeated imprecations, nothing had ever been seen like her before; and they held out to her husband the right hand of fellowship, as much for her sake as for his own.
Sir George’s popularity increased on acquaintance. A man who could fly a hawk with science—who could kill his game on the wing—who could ride any horse perfectly straight over any part of their country—who seemed to care very little for politics, except in so far as that the rights of venerie should be protected—who was reputed a consummate swordsman, and seen, on occasion, to empty his bottle of claret with exceeding good-will—was not likely to remain long in the background amongst the hardy northern gentlemen with whom his lot was cast. Very soon Sir George Hamilton’s society was sought as eagerly by both sexes, as his wife’s beauty was admired by the one and envied—shall I say denied?—by the other.
Notwithstanding female criticism, which female instinct may possibly rate at its true value, Cerise found herself very happy. Certainly, the life she led was very different from that to which she had been accustomed in her youth. An English lady of the last century devoted much of her time to duties that are now generally performed by a housekeeper, and Cerise had resolved to become a thorough English lady simply, I imagine, because she thought it would please George. So she rose early, inspected the dairies, betrayed contemptible ignorance in the manufacture of butter and cream, reviewed vast stores of linen, put her white arms through a coarse canvas apron, and splashed little dabs of jam upon her delicate nose, with the conviction that she was a perfectly competent and efficient housewife. Such occupations, if more healthy, were certainly less exciting than the ever-recurring gaieties of the family hotel in Paris, less agreeable than the luxurious tropical indolence of Montmirail West.